The present invention relates generally to releasible note pads.
The use of releasible note pads such as those sold by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company under the brand name POST-IT has increased significantly from the time these sheets were first introduced. They have become a staple of the office. These note pads are simply small pieces of paper arranged in tablet form with a band of low-tack pressure sensitive adhesive applied to one side of each near one of its edges. By pressing that edge against a surface, the user secures the note to that surface in a releasible, peelable manner and may then write on the note. The note may be removed when no longer needed, thus avoiding the need to write on the surface itself or the use of thumb tacks, push pins, paperclips, staples or other temporary fasteners to secure a note thereto and that would mar a surface. These note pads enjoy a wide variety of uses, such as bookrmarkers and line markers and may carry instructions and information for the user or for others. POST-IT notes can also be used to give others instructions or information about files and documents by simply sticking one on a file or documents and writing the relevant text on the note.
A releasible note can be applied anywhere on a surface. Therefore, the user will often locate the note adjacent to the portion of the underlying surface containing the text or illustrations the note applies to.
However, releasible notes are not practical for every marking application. For example, if a student wants to highlight key facts on a page of a text book, releasible notes are simply impractical. The student has little choice but to either mark directly on a book with a highlighting marker or keep separate notes. Releasible notes are also not reusable for notations once they are marked on.
To illustrate another application where conventional releasible notes are not practical, making temporary changes to a portion of an illustration is not easily done without marking directly on the illustration or making a photocopy and marking on the copy.
It will be seen that conventional releasible note pads provide a convenient means to convey information and instructions relating to text, a drawing, a document or a file, and to identify the specific location of the text or the illustration of interest. However, conventional releasible note pads are inadequate for making comments that interact with text or illustrations.
For these and other reasons, there remains a need for a better releasible notes for certain applications, particularly those where the user wants to make comments or highlight text or illustrations.
Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin""s learned father, astonished his friends by the way he handled the books in his considerable library. In a day when books were expensive and rare, he would annotate them and write in the margins and sometimes cut large books in half so as to be able to handle them more easily. His books were, in his estimation, his tools. They were to be used in whatever way worked best for his needs.
Erasmus Darwin would have found the present invention very useful, and his friends would have approved as well.
According to its major aspects and briefly recited, the present invention is a transparent releasible note sheet for making notations on text, illustrations, etc., that appear through the sheet. The sheet may be larger than conventional note sheets because it can be positioned over text and not adjacent to it. Thus, the present sheets can be dimensioned to cover a full page of text or an illustration.
Each sheet has a band of a low tack, pressure sensitive adhesive applied to one side and near an edge. Plural sheets made of a suitable transparent material such as acetate may be arranged in a tablet form so that each adheres to the one below it and the bottom one is adhered to a releasible backing. Preferably, the present invention is also a kit that includes at least one tablet of transparent releasible sheets and at least one suitable marker, and may also include a cloth or felt eraser and perhaps a scissors to trim sheets for particular uses.
In an alternative embodiment of the present invention, the present transparent sheets may have a mechanical or static electrical attachment rather than a chemical, adhesive, attachment. As an example of a mechanical attachment, to releasibly fasten a transparent sheet to a spiral notebook so that temporary notations can be made on a page, a transparent sheet may have a series of xe2x80x9cTxe2x80x9d tabs along one side that can be pushed between the spirals. Alternatively, holes may be punched along one side for use in a ringed binder. On a plastic surface, where the static electric attraction with a transparent sheet of acetate would be strong, no adhesive or mechanical attachment would be required.
An important feature of the present invention is the fact that the releasible notes are made of a transparent material. Because the material is transparent, text and illustrations underlaying the sheet are visible through the sheet. Thus, the sheets may be marked to highlight or annotate an underlaying surface without making permanent markings on the surface. The user""s comments may then interact with the text or illustrations in a way not practical with conventional releasible note pads.
Another important feature of the present invention is the size of the sheets. Because the sheets do not have to be positioned next to and not covering the text but rather can be placed over the text without obscuring it, they need not be small. Therefore, the size of the present sheets can be large to facilitate marking or highlighting an entire page of text or a drawing.
Yet another important feature of the present invention is that, because, in a preferred embodiment, the releasible sheets are made of acetate and because erasable markers exist for acetate surfaces, the present releasible note sheets can be reused.
Still another important aspect of the present invention is the fact that it can be assembled in the kit that includes at least one tablet and at least one marker so that the user can make the desired notations on a variety of surfaces using contrasting colors for example.
Other features and their advantages will be apparent to those skilled in the art from a careful reading of the Detailed Description of Preferred Embodiments, accompanied by the following drawings.